Will the LOTR movies be remade?

[pegkerr]

From an article I ran across:

More Lord of the Rings movies -- oh, yesss, preciousss, we wantsss them.

And within the next twenty or thirty years, we'll get them. Children who watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy will take their own children to a complete remake of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It's inevitable.

Most great movies will never be remade. We will never see remakes of The Godfather, or Gone with the Wind, or even Star Wars. But Lord of the Rings is different.

Why? Consider these five reasons...(read more here)

Hmm. Do you agree?

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Sean Connery as Gandalf? Those must be some good drugs he's on.

Seriously, I don't think the reason we won't see a Star Wars remake is because there's nothing more to the universe. A remake could be all about showing us what more there is to the universe. Could make it up. I think the reason we won't see such a remake (except for the obsessive re-edits of Lucas himself, dagnabbit) is that people love the originals too much and are too attached to their particulars. Who would direct another young actor to whine in Mark Hamill's tones about poooower converters? And yet we quote it, grinning sheepishly; it's ours now.

Just as every time I make potatoes, someone in my household inquires, "What's taters, precious? Eh? What's taters?"

Sure, Hamlet is a great play. But which of the movie versions thereof has captured the hearts and minds of something like 95% of Shakespeare lovers? None of them. Hamlet remakes get done because it's a great play that is not a great movie, and because actors feel that playing the title role is some kind of personal goal or career milestone. Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet, for example, may as well have featured a button on Branagh's shirt reading, "LOOK AT ME, I'M KENNETH BRANAGH PLAYING HAMLET!"

The movies of LotR, in contrast, satisfy every Tolkien fan I know who can conceive of being satisfied by a movie. They don't really offer opportunities for individual actors' grandstanding. (Although the idea of "LOOK AT ME, I'M KENNETH BRANAGH PLAYING ARAGORN" makes me a bit queasy.) And most of us who love Tolkien were able to let go and love the films, too. I don't think we'll see a lot of interest in doing that twice.

[rvrjoe775.livejournal.com]

For me, Derek Jacobi performed the definitive Hamlet, although he was a bit old for it. No other version compares. Don't even bring up Olivier or Gibson. I give Branagh credit for casting Jacobi in his version as Claudius, and note with amusement with Patrick Stewart played Claudius for Jacobi's Hamlet.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh, sure, I'm not saying that no screen version of Hamlet has captured anyone's heart. Just that there's no consensus on it, no overwhelming adoration from Shakespeare fans for one particular film.